I Devoured The Primordial Chaos to Become the Strongest

They fought their way through the Tower, up the lowest floor with the greyhounds and goblins and then the next floor with deadly traps of falling arrows and stones. The goblins are determined to keep them from going up but at least they aren’t as much in each floor as they are outside.

But what they lack in quantity, they made up in quality because the goblins they faced now knew how to use their weapons and it’s not mere decoration. And by the time they reached the middle of the Tower, they were breathing heavily and each could boast of a wound on them.

It made Azaroth curious as they used the opportunity to rest. Is the Acolyte crypt not made to be cleared by one person? He wondered that as he recovered his energy and cultivated the essence they already had.

Then up to the next floor and this one, the goblins were covered in metal armour and carried large weapons. There were only ten of them but they moved like feline predators even with all the metal bulk on them.

Azaroth tried to cook them alive inside their armour with his fire but the monsters used the armour as a shield, enough for them to block his fire to get close to him and then force him to fight with a sword.

There’s a reason the metal-covered monsters wanted to fight up close. Azaroth felt it when their swords crossed and he moved backwards from the force alone, his hand vibrating sharply.

The fight on the floor was worse than all the others combined because the armour the goblins were wearing had some kind of anti-elemental enchantment because fire and lightning hardly did anything to them.

But still, battered and bloodied, they emerged from that floor and into the next. And then up they went, each floor with difficulties they must face and overcome before moving on. The floor before the last floor was a tricky one because all the doors and windows locked immediately they entered. And then the room flooded with water that was conjured out of nowhere.

They would have drowned if Catena hadn’t used all his power to break the ground, making it crash down into other floors. At least he was able to leave a little platform for them to stand on. Still, soaking wet and dripping with water that almost drowned them, they made their way to the next and last floor where the king was keeping the goblin princess captive.

The king, the boss here, was different. A golden-skinned goblin with a big scepter and teeth that flashed with the same colour. The boss wasn’t actually very powerful and maybe that’s because Azaroth was there. The boss’s power was to turn itself and whatever it touched into solid gold.

The boss had flung it at them and Azaroth faced it, his flames blasting, raising the temperature in the room and melting the gold standing in front of them.

They all felt the rush of essence but not the satisfaction of knowing a crypt was complete until the ’captive’ princess stepped forward and presented them with a gift.

A small wooden chest that was filled with gold and jewels with a map on top. Azaroth glanced at it briefly, thinking about how it might be useful once he was out of here. But unlike the others, he didn’t stand over it and exclaim.

And that was how he was able to see the princess remove small, sharp throwing stars from the folds of her robes. The princess threw seven in just two seconds, blasting them out of its hands like bullets.

Azaroth frowned and moved away from the line of attack, doing nothing more than giving a grunt of warning to the others, looking after himself first above anything else.

As the metal stars flew towards their targets, they expanded rapidly until they were as big as a hand fan, cutting the air with the sound of mini tornadoes.

The others reacted late, almost too late. They were so carried away by the jewels that by the time they looked up there wasn’t much they could have done. Almost. But Catena was still holding the formation he used to break the ground on the previous floor and he quickly moulded the stones in the ground.

But he was slower than usual, this wasn’t just simple earth. This was stone and it was hard to mould. But still, he was able to bring a wall up just as the flying weapons reached them and crashed into it. It shuddered and shattered, sending the three flying back.

The goblin princess followed the attack by following it, crossing the distance quickly but Azaroth was suddenly there, almost sliding in melted gold, at least his forged body protected him from the heat.

The goblin princess wasn’t really a fighter and he took it out by cutting it from the neck through the chest. After its essence settled on them, they felt the mental alarm that the crypt was finally cleared. They also automatically understood why the princess attacked them.

The princess was the one that wanted its father dead but the ’adventurers’ would know of its past so it was better to take care of them now.

Stallus slapped dust away from herself, her eyes narrowed and she scowled. "That bastard cow! After we saved her and she turned on us like that! We should have killed her the moment we saw her!"

Alex also made his way out of the debris, his eyes flashing with anger. "Thank you, Catena. I can’t remember the last time I was caught off guard like this."

Catena coughed the dust away from his face, he got the worst of it as he was standing at the front. "I’m drained. Working with hard stones or rocks is still hard for me. But yes, that was really dangerous there."

Azaroth finally crouched to study the map that was left above the jewels. "Do any of you know how to read a map?" he asked.